D&D General 4e Healing was the best D&D healing

[Zardnaar]

Magic item crafting was part of the PHB rules, though. It was assumed to be information available to the players.

True but you only figure out how good it is when you get the DMG with the price lists.

If the DM doesn't sell to you a caster needs to take craft wand which isn't craft wondrous .

 

[DND_Reborn]

Magic item crafting was part of the PHB rules, though. It was assumed to be information available to the players.

No offense meant. The fact that your group played 3e for a really short time probably had a lot to do with not discovering some of most powerful "tricks" such as CLW wands.

Maybe, but looking at it 750 gp translates into 15 gp per CLW. It was over 15 years ago, so I don't recall if that was a big deal then or not...

 

[Zardnaar]

Maybe, but looking at it 750 gp translates into 15 gp per CLW. It was over 15 years ago, so I don't recall if that was a big deal then or not...

They're very cheap espicially if you craft them. You could afford one at very low levels. Mid levels buy half a dozen.

4E threw the baby out with the bathwater. The wands being cheap and easy to make is the problem. If they existed in 2E or 5E no problem.

It's virtually impossible to price magic items correctly. 4E failed hard there and made them boring to boot.

 

[Minigiant]

I think one of 4e's strength was how... naked the game design was. It was clear about its structure and its principles and it made us all think about game design more. I think the hobby got better overall as a result of discussions surrounding its design, good or bad.

It was, however, probably why a bunch of people didn't like it. It turns out a lot of people don't like to think of their role playing game as a an actual game?

4e sorta looked atthe marketed TV commercial Movie trailer version of D&D and said "I'm going to make a game for this". Then was completely open about it at every turn.

1. It ended up turning people away because it confirmed that game design required solidifying what the game was and what type it was.
2. By solidifying the game and type, you start locking out other styles of games and game types

I think about this a lot. In 5E, I find myself missing some of the fiddly 3E things (like how spot/listen got a penalty for distance or armor check penalties). There's something about a system pretending to be simulationist that lets players feel like they're in a world.

Somehow, balanced game rules put off some part of some people's minds. And that's weird.

I miss it sometimes. However the simulationist entries always ended up with questions of :
"what are you simulating"
"what other things would simulating that affect?"
"is it worth it?"
"did you want this?"

Then Spot/Listen/Hide/MS got shrunk to perception/stealth because giving every single scout class 2 extra skill points was not worth the trouble.
Like Undrave said, 4e's (and late 3e discussions) more gamist focus caused people for the first time look at the game and game design of D&D.
After 20+ years of not doing so, this turned some off.

 

[Viking Bastard]

How much were the magic crafting rules used, though? That is, by people who didn't squawk about D&D online? In our games back then, the abundance of healing potions did cause some problems (so I limited their availability), but I never thought of crafting healsticks until reading flame wars about the issue on these boards (and decided to not mention the option to my players). My players never showed the crafting rules much interest at all.

I'm just genuinely wondering. Ive never heard of anyone actually using those rules in RL (which doesn't mean no one I've talked with didn't, just that it never came up in discussions about the game).

Did everyone reading this thread who played 3e for a significant amount of time use those rules?

 

[Olrox17]

How much were the magic crafting rules used, though? That is, by people who didn't squawk about D&D online?

I'm just genuinely wondering. Ive never heard of anyone actually using those rules in RL (which doesn't mean no one I've talked with didn't, just that it never came up in discussions about the game).

Did everyone reading this thread who played 3e for a significant amount of time use those rules?

Considering that the third edition Wizard received the Scribe Scroll feat for free at level 1...I'd guess most people? In our very first campaign ever, one of us played a wizard, got that feat for free, discovered that magic crafting was a thing, and read the rules about it. Simple and straightforward path, really. No online forums needed (not that we had internet access, anyway).

 

[Oofta]

How much were the magic crafting rules used, though? That is, by people who didn't squawk about D&D online? In our games back then, the abundance of healing potions did cause some problems (so I limited their availability), but I never thought of crafting healsticks until reading flame wars about the issue on these boards (and decided to not mention the option to my players). My players never showed the crafting rules much interest at all.

I'm just genuinely wondering. Ive never heard of anyone actually using those rules in RL (which doesn't mean no one I've talked with didn't, just that it never came up in discussions about the game).

Did everyone reading this thread who played 3e for a significant amount of time use those rules?

All the time, especially for scrolls at lower levels. Using scrolls was a way to ensure your caster had the right spell at the right time and never ran out of spells.

 

[MoonSong]

It always just felt like extra overhead to me, so disagree.

Now 4E clerics I did enjoy because you could be something other than a healbot. The Mighty Reverend was right up there near the top of the all time fun PCs (so many D12s) ... except for the other issues I had with 4E that I'm not going to get into..

On the other hand, I didn't like that making a dedicated healbot was not only very hard, but actually counterproductive. 4e is very unforgiving, if you don't actively kill things with your own hands, then you are not contributing, period. Being a healer isn't an enjoyable experience in 4e.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Yeah ok, I've gone and looked at the rule material, probably for the first time in well over a decade, and we did scribe scrolls a lot. And brewed some potions. I kinda remembered the rules being less feat focused, more involved, but I guess it was just a feat chain. We dropped XP pretty early on, so that may have complicated matters for us (I don't remember if or how we resolved that) and looking over the feats, I do remember my group being really into metamagic, so maybe they just never went down the crafting rabbit hole because they spent all their slots on metamagic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

As long as we remember that "perfect" and "best" are very different things, I agree. 4E actually failed in a couple of goals re healing, not least that it was attempting to do attrition as viable but didn't really succeed. Overall though, the healing worked better than any other edition, including 5E, because the limited number of "proper" heals per combat and longer HP bars meant that there was more tension and less "whack a mole" than unmodified 5E has, and individual healing spells counted for more. When the healer was done with their three "real" heals per combat things could get very tense.

Plus it wasn't feast or famine re gaining HP out of combat.

Anyway I've seen this at length on both sides of the table (I mostly play healer classes) and I'd say 4E, whilst definitely imperfect, was overall the best here.